Your next software renewal is a build-or-buy decision: how to make it

Software price rises in 2026 are increasingly arriving through tier changes, AI add-ons and expiring grandfathered plans, not headline announcements. With UK SMEs under real cost pressure, every renewal date is a natural moment to decide whether to keep paying, cut back, or build something small around how you work. For standard, regulated tools, keep buying. For the expensive gaps, a custom build can genuinely pay off.

How are SaaS prices rising without an announced price rise?

A HackerNoon piece published on 20 October 2026, written by someone who catalogues SaaS pricing pages, argues that the increase now happens structurally. The writer lists the usual routes:

• The tier shuffle. A capability that used to sit in the mid-tier plan quietly appears only in the top tier.
• The plan replacement. Your plan is retired and the nearest replacement costs more.
• Expiring grandfathering. The old price you were protected on comes to an end.
• The unit rename. Same number, different unit, so you get less for what looks like the same price.

The same piece notes that AI features almost never live inside the headline plan price. They tend to arrive as an add-on or a separate charge.

It's an opinion piece rather than news, but it matches what many owners see on their invoices: the list price barely moves, yet the bill does.

How big have the visible increases been?

Where vendors have raised prices openly, the numbers aren't small. A tracker of 2026 SaaS price increases, checked against vendor sources on 5 October 2026, found 24 verified plan price increases across 4 vendors. The median increase across those plans was 16%, and the biggest jump was 43%, on Microsoft 365 F1 (no Teams).

The pattern that matters for smaller firms: the cheapest plans took the biggest percentage hits. The same tracker records a Xero price rise that took effect on 1 October 2026 for new and existing US subscribers.

A caveat worth being clear about. Those figures are US dollar prices, and the Xero change is US-only. Don't assume your UK bill has moved by the same amount. Check your own invoices, your UK price list or your reseller.

Salesforce gives a clear example of AI being folded into higher tiers. Its reorganised editions, announced in September, are listed at $195, $395 and $550 per user per month, with AI bundled in. Salesforce says existing customer pricing on legacy editions remains unchanged. That's reassuring for now, but it's also exactly the kind of protected plan worth keeping an eye on at every renewal.

Why does this matter more for UK SMEs right now?

Because there's less room to absorb it. Research from Flagstone, released on 19 October 2026, found that economic uncertainty and rising costs are leaving UK SMEs coping rather than growing, and 43% doubt they can continue this way for more than two years. That survey isn't about software specifically, but it explains why owners are looking hard at every regular cost.

Software subscriptions are one of the few regular costs you can actually change. Globally, figures compiled here cite Zylo reporting that 79% of IT leaders faced price hikes at renewal last year, and Vertice estimating that 80% of licences go unused or underused. Those are largely big-company numbers, but the direction is the same for a 20-person firm.

When should you keep buying off-the-shelf software?

A custom build isn't the answer to every price rise. For some tools it would be a step backwards.

Keep buying where the software is standard, regulated or changes often:

• Accounting and Making Tax Digital filing. The rules change, and keeping up is the vendor's job.
• Payroll. Same reason, with less room for error.
• Email and office software. Commodity tools that aren't worth reinventing.

Replacing these with something bespoke means taking on compliance and maintenance work you don't want. If one of these tools has gone up, the better moves are usually trimming seats, dropping a tier you don't fully use, or switching to a comparable product.

When does a custom build start to pay off?

The picture changes when you're paying a lot for a small slice of what a product does. Watch for these signals:

• You're on a top tier for one feature. If a tier shuffle has pushed a single capability up a plan, you may be paying the difference across every seat.
• You pay for seats just so people can view or approve things. Staff who only check a status or sign something off can often be served by a simple portal.
• An AI add-on is really a second subscription for one job. Sorting incoming documents or emails, for example, can sometimes be handled by a focused piece of workflow automation.
• Your team copies data between tools by hand. Re-keying is slow, error-prone and a hidden cost of a patchwork of subscriptions.
• How you work is what makes you different. If the software forces you to change a process customers value, it's working against you.

When one or more of these applies, it's worth pricing a small bespoke system against the subscription over a few years, including the cost of future price changes you can't control.

Is there a middle option between buying and building?

Yes, and it's often the most sensible one. Keep the SaaS product at the core and build a thin custom layer on top: a customer or staff portal, an approvals workflow, or an integration that keeps two systems in step.

This keeps the vendor responsible for the heavy, regulated parts while you stop paying top-tier prices for the bits you actually use. It does depend on being able to get your data out and connect to the product through an API, so check that before you commit. Business process automation is usually where this kind of work lives.

What should you do next?

Run a 30-minute check before each renewal. For every tool, note:

1. The renewal date, and whether a grandfathered plan is about to end.
2. Seats paid for versus seats actually used.
3. The single feature that keeps you on your current tier.
4. Any AI add-on charges.
5. Whether you can export your data and connect to it through an API.

Then put each tool into one of three groups: keep, cut back, or candidate for a custom build or add-on layer.

For anything in the third group, start small. One short sprint can put working software in front of the people who'll use it, and you decide whether to go further from there. That's how we work. If you'd like a second opinion before committing, an independent review of your software and options is a low-risk first step.